I agree with you. Posted a few times to remind folks that "we" have been doing this for years.
That said, it's not a bad thing to call out cloud technologies in E3.
Server based game augmentations. The transition to cloud. Really possible?
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
- Start date
I agree with you. Posted a few times to remind folks that "we" have been doing this for years.
That said, it's not a bad thing to call out cloud technologies in E3.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
There is a rather large potential change at least with regards to games. Even MMO's had relatively limited processor offloading compared to what Microsoft is talking about for the cloud.
And MMO's have always been on dedicated server hardware. They could not dynamically scale onto more or less servers depending on load. Hence for less popular games it wasn't uncommon to have server downtime as game worlds were manually shuffled from one set of dedicated servers to another in order to balance the load generated by the respective server populations.
And with MMO's being the most sophisticated use of offline processing, they were still very limited to AI, data structures, combat resolution, thousands of simultaneous players (versus 64 player for the largest multiplayer FPS games on dedicated servers), etc. Very basic stuff compared to what Microsoft envisions and what some developers are hinting at.
Regards,
SB
It could just mean that some single player games will have sickers "requires internet connection" on their boxes. PC gamers have been used to games that require internet connection for a long time: Unreal Tournament, Quake Area, WoW, Diablo, etc. It's not been a problem. If your PC doesn't have a internet connection, you just simply do not buy those kinds of games. Consoles haven't had many games that require internet connection to start, but Modern Warfare (and many other shooters) are basically online games as well. Single player campaign is just a practice for the real thing. Same is likely true for Titanfall. You already need internet connection to enjoy many of the biggest console hits to the fullest.
Removal of the internet requirement might also mean that some single player game developers skip the cloud completely in order to sell the game to wider audiences (because the internet connection is no longer guaranteed). This might negatively affect the game quality, but the increased sales (more potential customers) might be worth it financially.
Many current generation console games have been using dedicated server farms build just for a single game. Look at this Warhawk server room (racks filled with PS3s):
http://www.ps3blog.net/2007/08/09/warhawk-multiplayer-ps3-servers/
Warhawk (2007) uses PS3 as servers because you can start your own server. It is an interesting solution for consoles since you don't have to rely on Sony to operate the servers.
Traditional/old MMO games are designed to run segregated game server instances, but even in this scenario, virtual servers can be used to consolidate low population servers. World of Warcraft is in the midst of releasing Virtual Realms for such purposes. Over time, we should see old operators move to cloud technologies for efficiency. They have to migrate their users slowly to avoid further service disruption.
Newer MMOs and online games may and do run on Amazon's EC2. e.g., This is from 3+ years ago: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/02/17/rightscale-powering-social-games-on-ec2/
After Zynga went IPO, they migrated their bigger games back to their own EC2-like cloud platform, zCloud. New games were deployed on EC2 to ride out the initial bump, then move to the private cloud once things stablize and become sustainable.
There are also articles on game developers like NaughtyDog running MP jobs on EC2.
And here's a tutorial to run minecraft server on EC2:
http://www.blog.gartonhill.com/setting-up-a-free-minecraft-server-in-the-cloud-part-1/
There are many ways to use cloud technologies, depending on the state of your online service.
Traditional/old MMO games are designed to run segregated game server instances, but even in this scenario, virtual servers can be used to consolidate low population servers. World of Warcraft is in the midst of releasing Virtual Realms for such purposes. Over time, we should see old operators move to cloud technologies for efficiency. They have to migrate their users slowly to avoid further service disruption.
Newer MMOs and online games may and do run on Amazon's EC2. e.g., This is from 3+ years ago: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/02/17/rightscale-powering-social-games-on-ec2/
After Zynga went IPO, they migrated their bigger games back to their own EC2-like cloud platform, zCloud. New games were deployed on EC2 to ride out the initial bump, then move to the private cloud once things stablize and become sustainable.
There are also articles on game developers like NaughtyDog running MP jobs on EC2.
And here's a tutorial to run minecraft server on EC2:
http://www.blog.gartonhill.com/setting-up-a-free-minecraft-server-in-the-cloud-part-1/
There are many ways to use cloud technologies, depending on the state of your online service.
RenegadeRocks
Legend
Now that always online requirement is gone, what happens to the promised 'cloud Power' to the devs? I posted it in the wrong thread before.
Bt now that the MS can't guarantee net access from everywhere , what do the devs do now? Make it optional? Back to square one?
Bt now that the MS can't guarantee net access from everywhere , what do the devs do now? Make it optional? Back to square one?
It's exactly the same. The 24 hour heartbeat didn't guarantee stable Internet access either. Nothing has changed.
Probably not an issue.
For online games, you'll need connectivity anyway. So they can continue to use the servers.
For SP games, it's either optional or doesn't support cloud at all.
EDIT:
I'm curious about MAG's 256 player server technology. Zipper patented it but I haven't seen it surfaced yet. I think the lead joined MS about 2 years ago.
For online games, you'll need connectivity anyway. So they can continue to use the servers.
For SP games, it's either optional or doesn't support cloud at all.
EDIT:
I'm curious about MAG's 256 player server technology. Zipper patented it but I haven't seen it surfaced yet. I think the lead joined MS about 2 years ago.
The game will just require online requirement and as Publishers have now been pushed into a corner I suggest many games will be required to be online
Put a cloud-shaped sticker on the box - "Cloud Empowered! Requires an internet connection to play"
RenegadeRocks
Legend
I know, all i am saying is that earlier MS had put out the word to the end user that u need a 1.5mbps connection for your xbox to function. So developers were sure everyone has a stable net and always online system. That is gone now. Now Xbox owners willr ange from full net to no net at all, so the cloud systems are not guaranteed to function on all devices. An optinal feature becomes a no-feature basically, when it comes to game development. Like we are saying that since ps eye isn't available on all systems so won't be used much.
We can't expect support from all games anymore. Yes, most prbly a 'Internet required' sticker for the ga,es which use it, whihc most prbly be mostly exclusives.
Microsoft didn't promise a reliable connection. A bunch of their PR revolved around having graceful degradation if the cloud was being used for things like single player. An outage that lasts for multiple minutes starts becoming indistinguishable in terms of fallback measures to being offline entirely.
Talking of which, I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere in the thread, and there is another good read to be had in an Eurogamer's article which says, among other things, that the NAT might be a thing of the past thanks to the cloud.
The NAT was a nightmarish thing to set up in some situations, and fortunately the most modern routers had an option to apply open NAT settings automatically if you wanted.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...000-server-cloud-but-what-do-developers-think
Just a byproduct of the move away from P2P to server-based multiplayer as the norm?
It would probably depend on what it was actually being used to do. In use cases where straight turning off cloud processing would be jarring for the game experience developers would have to work out a way to have the function scale. buffer, etc. to create a smoother transition as the connection degrades or drops out.
So it sounds like either is possible. Its just another resource thats flexibility depends on the talent of the devs,rather than some hard and fast rule.
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So further down the road maybe more and more of the game resembles an interactive simulator where the CPU dispatches 'calls' the server with models to solve ( all the models reside server side of course ) and the CLOUD crunches away returning vector fields or other data structures than can continue evolve the "game model" running on the client. Sorta kinda like in inverse of PS3 and the Folding Home project
Somebody mentioned either way up thread or in another thread that you really just need to send state changes across the network and obviously games will need new architectures to take advantage of new ways of sending state to and fro.
inevitable
if this has been discussed before.Similar threads
